The Irascible ProfessorSMIrreverent Commentary
on the State of Education in America Today

by Dr. Mark H. Shapiro

"An
education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much
you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know
and what you don't".... ...Anatole France

Commentary
of the Day - February 19, 2001: Science Education and The Dilemma
of "High-Stakes" Testing:

One of the central
features of the recent "accountability" movement in K-12 education has
been the development of "standards" and "assessment" instruments.
Although education is primarily a state responsibility and the actual standards
that are put into place in the K-12 schools are state standards, national
organizations have developed model standards for school mathematics and
science education that frequently form the basis for state standards.
Non-governmental organizations such as the National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
together with quasi-governmental organizations such as the National Academy
of Science have been active in efforts to make the public aware of the
poor state of school math and science education. These groups also
have developed model standards aimed at improving the education that K-12
students receive in these subjects.

"Science for All
Americans" and "Benchmarks for Science Literacy" are two examples of such
standards for science education. These are detailed sets of standards
that delineate what every school child should learn about science in elementary,
middle and high school. The goal of these standards in noble -- to
raise the level of scientific literacy in the United States to an
acceptable level. Well-known science educator Audrey B. Champaign
from the State University of New York - Albany, speaking at the 2001 Annual
Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has
said that education policy is "standards with teeth". By this she
meant that when accountability measures with both rewards and sanctions
are added to standards "de facto" education policy has been established.

The aim of the
education policy that has been proposed by the Bush Administration,
and which has been supported widely by both Democratic and Republican legislators,
is to use annual testing as the instrument to achieve accountability in
the distribution of federal aid to K-12 education. Many states are
carrying the idea one step further by requiring students to pass similar
exams to receive a high school diploma -- so-called "high-stakes" testing.

As the Irascible
Professor sees it, two problems are created by the combination of universal
science education standards and corresponding high-stakes tests to measure
student performance. First, a "one size fits all" set of standards
that are aimed primarily at developing science literacy may not be appropriate
for those students who might be interested in science or engineering careers.
Ideally, we should be doing more to identify those students who exhibit
an interest in science and to nurture that interest with activity- and
inquiry-based learning.

Second, when high-stakes
tests are employed, teachers tend to teach to these tests. For practical
reasons the tests almost always end up being of the multiple choice variety.
Teachers typically use a "drill and practice" approach to prepare their
students for them. Unfortunately, drill and practice exercises are
the best way to destroy any interest a student may have in a subject.
These rote memorization exercises do little to help students understand
the underlying scientific theories. Instead, they turn learning into
punishment.

The dilemma, however,
is that without some impetus for improvement science teaching in America's
K-12 schools is unlikely to change. The Irascible Professor thinks
that better teachers and more resources would go a long way towards achieving
that impetus. Testing can play a role, but it should not be the sole
focus.